From agro-waste to encapsulated carbon catalyst for improving stability of naphtha desulfurization

Abstract

The deactivation of the oxidative desulfurization (ODS) catalysts is a challenge and is a major concern in industrial catalytic processes. In this work, an activated carbon (AC) was prepared from agricultural waste and modified to withstand the ODS activity loss over time. The AC was impregnated with manganese and coated with aluminum oxide to prolong the activity lifetime. The catalysts were characterized by nitrogen adsorption-desorption, scanning electron microscope, energy dispersive X-ray, X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and transition electron microscope (TEM). The BET surface areas of the examined AC materials were 814.48 m2/g, 784.76 m2/g, and 755.03 m2/g for the AC, Mn/AC, and coated Mn/AC catalysts, respectively with a dominance of microporous pore size. The TGA showed that the coating layer retards the degradation of the active metal and suppresses phase transitions. XRD showed no change in the structure of the catalyst with a coating layer, and from the TEM analysis, the coating layer thickness was 3.6 nm. The kinetics of the ODS catalysts were investigated. It was shown that the ODS reaction follows the first-order kinetics and is not influenced by the coating layer. The activity decay was also investigated. It is found that the activation energy of the deactivation reaction over the coated catalyst was higher than the uncoated catalyst.